A few weeks later, I found myself in Somerville, Tennessee, the county seat of Fayette County. I remember almost nothing about the project’s headquarters. What I remember is the heat. The oppressive humidity wrapped around me like a hot, dripping blanket. I remember watermelons, huge and ruby red, sold at roadside stands. I remember endless two-lane roads disappearing into walls of green. Cotton fields stretching toward the horizon. Red clay shoulders along the road. Front porches. Screen doors slamming shut. The smell of earth after an afternoon thunderstorm. Everywhere I looked, the landscape seemed larger, greener, and more alive than anything I had known on Long Island.

The project director was a white man whose name I no longer remember. What I do remember is that he was cold, impatient, and mildly annoyed by my presence. I was another volunteer, another kid from the north. He gave me a few instructions, told me where I would be staying, and quickly moved on to more important matters.

Then someone told me I would be living with a woman named Mrs. Meadows.

She changed everything for me.

Mrs. Meadows lived on a large piece of property on the Mississippi-Tennessee line. Her son and his family lived nearby. She was a small woman, about 80 years old, with gray hair, freckles, and a beautiful smile. Looking back, I realize that what struck me first was not how she looked, but how she made me feel. After the chilly reception at project headquarters, she welcomed me with a warmth that immediately put me at ease. I had traveled hundreds of miles from home and landed in a world completely unfamiliar to me. Yet from the moment I arrived, she treated me as if she had been expecting me all along.

She fed me well. Most evenings, we sat together and talked. She asked me about my future. I told her I wanted to become a lawyer. Sometimes she spoke about growing up in Mississippi. She described the Klan, the beatings, and the lynchings she remembered from childhood, as well as the complicated hierarchy within the Black community. She was light-skinned and explained that, for generations, lighter skin often carried social advantages. I listened carefully, or at least I thought I did. At 18, much of what she told me washed over me. Only decades later would I begin to understand the world she described.

What I remember most vividly is her voice. It was warm, melodic, and comforting. She had a twinkle in her eye and a homespun wisdom that seemed effortless. We made each other laugh. She treated me almost like a son.

The next morning, my guide arrived. I no longer remember his real name, so let’s call him Big Sam. The first time I saw him, he rode toward the house bareback on a horse. He was tall, athletic, handsome, and completely fearless. He reminded me of Jim Brown. More than anything, he carried himself like a prince. He had a quiet confidence that fascinated me from the moment we met.

Together, we went door-to-door, encouraging people to register to vote. I wish I remembered more of the mechanics of the work. What I remember are the people. Sometimes, small children would see me coming and run. I can still picture them disappearing behind their mothers or around house corners. At the time, I was confused. I felt like some kind of evil white ghost. Big Sam wasn’t confused at all. He would kneel, speak gently to them, and assure them I was okay. Only later did I appreciate the significance of those moments. Before I could help anyone, someone first had to make me trustworthy.

Big Sam introduced me to his world: his friends, his church, and the rhythms of a life that was completely foreign to me. What strikes me now is how quickly they accepted me. Looking back, I don’t know why. I was a Jewish kid from Long Island who knew almost nothing about the South or Black life and certainly almost nothing about the realities these young men and women faced every day. Yet somehow they welcomed me into their circle.

What I remember is the energy. The laughter. The teasing. The music. The dancing. The flirting. There was a spontaneity and vitality that captivated me. I felt more alive than I had ever been. During the day, we drove dusty roads and knocked on doors. At night, we gathered on porches, at parties, at church events, or wherever young people happened to be. I had come south believing I was joining a movement. In many ways, I had also stumbled into a world that expanded my understanding of life itself.

For the first time in my life, I attended a Black church. Nothing in my suburban Jewish upbringing had prepared me for it. The music seemed to rise from deep within the congregation. People sang with their whole bodies. The church felt alive. I remember looking around and feeling something I couldn’t articulate at the time. I felt at home, even if it did not resemble anything I knew—or maybe because it didn’t.

One evening, Mrs. Meadows said something that has stayed with me for more than 60 years. She told me that Black people in the South had learned to be cautious around white people. Too much history stood between them. Too many consequences. I heard her words but did not fully grasp their meaning. Today, I understand that she was describing something far deeper than simple distrust. She was describing what generations of oppression do to human relationships.

Not all of my education came from Mrs. Meadows or the voter registration project. Some of it came from the ordinary dramas of being 18. One night, Big Sam took me to a party. There, I met a young woman with striking green-brown eyes. We spent hours talking. Somehow, the conversation turned to Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. I told her I admired Atticus Finch and wanted to become a lawyer. She told me she wanted to leave Fayette County and see more of the world than the one she had inherited.

Then one day she told me she loved me. No girl had ever said those words to me before. I was terrified. I was in love, too, but the words stuck in my throat. History was unfolding around us. Civil rights workers were risking their lives. We were trying to register voters in counties where Black citizens had been intimidated and excluded for generations. Yet we were still 18.

As summer drew to a close, I found myself facing a realization I had never anticipated: I didn’t want to leave.

I had arrived believing I was helping others. I left carrying far more than I had given. Mrs. Meadows, Big Sam, the church, the young people, the roads, the fields, the conversations—they had all become part of me. I could not have explained it then. I knew only that leaving felt wrong.

I don’t remember saying goodbye to Mrs. Meadows. I wish I did. I am certain she hugged me and that she cried. I suspect I was emotional too, though I wasn’t very skilled at understanding my own feelings. If she gave me advice, it was probably something simple, like “Follow your dream.”

A year later, I returned to Tennessee with several friends. I wanted them to meet this remarkable woman who had welcomed a Jewish kid from Long Island into her home and treated him like family.

When I arrived, I learned that she had died. I don’t remember much else from that trip. Only the shock and the sadness.

For decades, Mrs. Meadows gradually faded into the background of my life. I thought about her occasionally, but not often. Marriage, graduate school, children, a career, moving to Israel, and my wife Deborah’s Alzheimer’s—life kept unfolding, as life does. The years accumulated, and the memory of that summer grew fainter, though it never entirely disappeared.

Then a faded plaque brought her back.

As I sat, talking about Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream and the need to restore what has been neglected, Mrs. Meadows began to emerge from the shadows of memory. First, her smile. Then her voice. Then her laughter. Then the warmth with which she welcomed me into her home.

I can imagine her sitting on her porch, rocking slowly back and forth and listening, smiling, and shaking her head in her gentle way. Then, in a voice that sounded more like music than speech, she might say, Honey, you followed your dream.

I found myself wishing I could sit with her one more time. Not as the 18-year-old boy she knew, but as the 80-year-old man I have become. I would tell her about my life, about becoming a psychologist, about Deborah. About my children and grandchildren. About moving to Israel. About all the twists and turns she never lived to see. About how even though relations between our respective communities have frayed since I stayed in her house, I’m still working to keep Dr. King’s dream from fading.